Goldman chief hits at `useless' banking
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has attacked some investment banking products as socially useless and said that the controversy over bankers' pay was both understandable and appropriate.
In a speech to the Handelsblatt banking conference in Frankfurt on Wednesday, Mr Blankfein said: "The industry let the growth and complexity in new instruments outstrip their economic and social utility as well as the operational capacity to manage them."
Rivals are likely to criticise the remarks as self-serving. (...)
But Mr Blankfein’s vocal support for the thrust of global regulatory reform is likely to be influential among peers and welcomed by politicians and regulators.
"global regulatory reform", hmmm...
What to Expect from the G20, IMF Meetings
There will be some minor changes, and these will be much trumpeted. But what will really change in or around the power structure of global finance – as it plays out in the United States, Western Europe, or anywhere else?
Nothing – and you know this because otherwise the CEOs of all our top financial institutions would be mounting massive PR campaigns against the proposals, with op eds, Internet ads, innumerable cable appearances, and a virtually constant presence at Treasury. Just think back to how active they were earlier this year, when FDIC-type resolution for big banks was on the table.
Unless and until our biggest financial players are brought to heel, we are destined to repeat versions of the same boom-bust-bailout cycle.
Blankfein was not so anguished about his social uselessness that he'd let Goldman Sachs go bankrupt - the just free market fate for such activities, after all - last autumn. As we know, he got personally involved in the AIG bailout because the one company most likely to go bankrupt along with AIG was Goldmans itself.
But now that, having survived thanks to a large dose of taxpayer cash, Goldman is again busy making money off the ruins of the financial system, and looking like one of the "great survivors" of the crisis, he feels ready to give lessons - and, make no mistake, his targets are the other banks, whom he is taunting and mocking. As the Simon johnson quote above suggests, he's not worried about regulatory reform, he's just trying to make it sound like some bankers (guess who) do deserve their large bonuses (a payout in shares is still a nice payout if the shares are expected to be worth something, and Goldman stock certainly looks better than that of other banks) but the others should be cut down to size. In other words: he's trying to ride public outrage at the bad bankers to get himself rid of the few competitors that remain.
Because Goldman Sachs is not useless, of course not.
